“You can’t not submit it,” I say. “You won’t even have a shot if you don’t enter.”
“Yeah, but then I can’t be rejected, either.” Winona’s so quiet when she says this, I almost don’t even hear her. But understanding dawns on me, and I finally put all the pieces together. This is why she rewrote so obsessively. This is why she pushed to reshoot so many times. Because if something isn’t finished, it can never really be judged. You’ll never have to reckon with the fact that maybe it—and you—didn’t live up to your expectations.
(...)
“This is the real deal, Eliza,” Winona says. “And I guess . . . especially because I’ve now literally put myself into the film, I don’t want to know that it’s not good enough. I don’t want to know that I’m not good enough.”